The Deadline
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Heineken İtaly Activation from Kreatif360 on Vimeo.
I don’t usually post advertising, but this is an unbelievable effort from Heineken in Italy.
(Thanks to Stephen O’Leary of O’Leary Analytics)
Weeshie Fogarty is a Radio Kerry DJ and Kingdom legend. Recently, despite the obvious links between Rockafella, Jay-Z and Austin Stacks, Weeshie had some difficulty pronouncing Mrs Jigga’s name after he discovered his sound engineer had gone to Dublin for a gig.
DJ Mek, a man who once stood idly by as I was man-handled by erstwhile hero Ian Brown, has offered us a superb mix of Weeshie’s confused on-air inquiries and a Beyonce track here.
UPDATE: Apparently, as usual, I’m late to the party; my old pal Ciaran Murphy and the Off the Ball Lads were the first to bring this to the country’s attention.
The Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski recently recounted a favourite quote he prodded like loose change from an interview subject.
Louis ‘Red’ Klotz, has the most unenviable jobs in sport; coaching the team that faces the famous Harlem Globetrotters every week.
The Washington Generals (also often known as the New York Nationals) are the journeymen stooges who, game after game, season after season, decade after decade are duped by the same flashy crossover and follow the ball-on-the-string trick like a loyal but obtuse dog teased with a biscuit treat.
In the 58 years since he’s taken charge, Klotz’s teams have beaten the Globetrotters just twice. Amazingly, they’ve lost — wait for it — over 13,000 times.
But Red yet still shelters an un-dimming flicker of hope. This past winter the Globetrotters, a well-oiled organisation more adept at slick marketing and cheap publicity stunts than the ad men of Madison Avenue, announced they’d face the Generals again. But this time on ice.
If Klotz was perplexed at this curious arrangement or fearful for the safety of his boys, he didn’t let on. In fact, he made a foolhardy statement that encapsulates his entire outlook: “We excel on ice”.
Yes, that’s right. After decades playing the pantomime villains and losing every game bar a couple, he thinks ice (ice!) will suit the Generals’ playing style.
With unflinching optimism like that, he must support Sligo Rovers. Or Shels. Or be a season ticket holder at Dalyer. Or any League of Ireland club.
Tonight the Airtricity League kicks off after a 12-round close-season that left even Roddy ‘Queensbury Rules’ Collins punch-drunk. While its players went, scandalously, unpaid, Cork City endured a court-room drama so protracted and convoluted I thought I’d put the Boston Legal DVD back in the Lost box-set. The once great Derry City also dropped a division in a winter of discontent.
But tonight, after all the off-field attrition — though the battle scars are admittedly yet to heal — a football match will break out. And then another. And a few more. It’s perhaps an apposite time to reaffirm some of the many reasons why we love domestic football.
1. The quaint stadia, like the Carlisle Grounds. Bray Wanderers’ home is the only stadium that needed a Hollywood budget to bring it up to 1920s standards with Neil Jordan casting the charming, seaside ground as Croke Park in Michael Collins. The Dart spin is nicer than a Tube journey too.
2. We’re on the way, meet you in… Kennedy’s of Drumcondra; The Black Lion, Inchicore; The Horseshoe on the corner flag in Turner’s Cross Tavern; the Yellow House in Waterford. Wherever.
3. The Aviva Stadium. It looks like Optimus Prime’s foot spa but it’s ours now too. The Palindrome will likely host Bohs and Rovers’ Dublin derby in August. The RDS and elsewhere was grand in the interim but it’ll be good to be knocking about Lansdowne Road again for the big days.
4. Ryanair. You don’t have to pay Michael O’Leary to use the toilet on the way to Flancare Park. Though Longford is like a foreign country sometimes.
5. Jonny Logan. The Eurovision titan’s Hold Me Now was appropriated by Bohs fans after a particularly successful sing-song in a
Stockholm bar. You don’t hear that on English terraces.
6. Terraces! What am I saying? There aren’t any terraces in the EPL. If I wanted to sit in a comfortable seat with affluent middle aged men for an hour and a half I’d queue for a prostate exam in the GP’s waiting room.
7. Gary Lineker’s MOTD puns have ruined more of my Saturday nights than nightclub doormen.
8. Ball was there ref, the ball was there!
9. Neale Fenn’s first touch.
10. Walk away, player!
11. Gary Twigg. The Scottish striker has a haircut that’s heard around the world, but he’s the most natural scorer this side of Ashley Cole.
12. Ashley Cole
13. Friday night football. A pay-slip, a hair-cut and a pint before kick-off is, scientifically, the best start to any weekend, right?
14. Fans’ jokes when UCD visit: ‘Come on lads, these have bleedin’ school in the morning!’
15. Watching a midfielder steaming into a tackle before emerging from puddles of blood and gnawed bone with the ball, then turning to your pal and saying: “I used to have him in my pocket at U15s, ‘member?”
16. Mick Wallace’s Italian renaissance in Wexford. And his Youths side wear pink. Forza.
17. The asterisk; we usually boast more than any other league in the world.
18. Summer football — the sun shines but we excel on ice too.
Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
“He Marvin Gayed his own nephew. The boss of the family.”
- Vito, (referring to Uncle Junior shooting Tony)
Melfi: “How’d that make you feel?”
Tony: “I wished it was me in there.”
Melfi: “Giving the beating or taking it?”
“There’s an old Italian saying: you fuck up once, you lose two teeth.”
- Tony
“You’re not gonna believe this. The guy killed 16 Czechoslovakians. He was an interior decorator.”
- Paulie
“All due respect, you got no fuckin’ idea what it’s like to be Number One. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fuckin’ thing. It’s too much to deal with almost. And in the end you’re completely alone with it all.”
- Tony Soprano
Tony: I called you here, ’cause I got something to tell you. From now on, I’m gonna rely on you more and more, ’cause you’re the only one I can fully trust. Sil and Paulie… they’re old friends, but you’re one thing they’re not.
Christopher: What’s that, T?
Tony: Blood. You’re gonna lead this family into the 21st Century.
Christopher: Well, Tony, technically we’re already in the 21st Century…
[Tony looks at him, confused]
Christopher Moltisanti: Forget about it. You won’t regret this, T.
What fucking kind of human being am I, if my own mother wants me dead?
- Tony
There are no scraps in my scrapbook.
- Phil Leotardo
I went to see comedy’s own David O’Doherty in the Pavilion, here in Cork, on Saturday night.
Despite the former Perrier winner not remembering meeting my friends and I in 2004 in a field in Laois, it was a ridiculously enjoyable evening of laughter/muzak. Here’s his ode to the world’s greatest golfer/love-maker.
To paraphrase one of Ronald Reagan’s White House advisors, speaking during a particularly stressful political stand-off, Eli Manning is an NFL quarter back so chilled out he sometimes endures sleepless afternoons.
Thanks to this calm demeanour, a chronscopic arm and a thimble of good fortune, he managed to drive the unfashionable New York Giants to an unlikely and famous Super Bowl victory in the 2007 season.
Pulling off vivid cartoon comic-book displays against monochrome backdrops in places like sub-zero Green Bay and Buffalo, the usually affable Manning insisted his young fiancee sit outside on the backside-numbing bleachers — rather than in the toasty corporate players’ box. For luck, you understand.
A slightly-embarrassed Manning explained when asked: “I’m not superstitious; I’m little-stitious”.
After the stinging defeat in Paris almost two weeks ago, tomorrow’s game in Twickenham against a resurgent England takes on — if this were possible for a showdown with the Auld Enemy — yet more consequence. And God knows our little-stitious rugby stars may need every bit of luck we can rub together, deep behind enemy lines.
Donncha O’Callaghan will carefully choose a new pair of stockings from a pile of fresh laundry the height of a medium-sized human child tonight. They’ll then be packed — by someone else — in a bag before the LateLate show. Ritual. Ritual. Ritual.
Other members of the playing staff will avoid the otherwise-popular David Wallace. Like the special breed of fainting goats that farmers in South America strategically keep with their more prized cattle, ‘Wally’ goes deathly quiet when a predator is on the horizon. He’s getting in the zone.
Meanwhile, back in the real world where the likes of you and I pack our own dirty socks into an old Roches Stores plastic bag before heading to the gym (just me?), fans are doing their bit for the ceremony of a big-game build-up and committing to tape their heartfelt team talks, which the squad view before kick-off.
One personal favourite features a ruddy-faced, unshaven gentleman under a woolly hat. This guy is the living embodiment of Yeats’s idealised Irishman depicted in The Fisherman. Fittingly, his speech is pure poetry.
In comparison, Al Pacino’s Game of Inches call-to-arms sounds like the automated voice on the Luas Red Line. A soaring lyric employing every rhetorical device seen in great political oration, by it’s climax I launch a wild Flannery-like swipe at the dog as if he’s a French winger, while the evocative music swells yet more.
(Incidentally, World Cup-winning England head coach Clive Woodward appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs last Sunday. His music choices were, quite frankly, a thundering disgrace and should fill every Irish heart with optimism. Ronan Keating. Take That. 90s euro pop, which he explained evoked memories of Lawrence Dallaglio dancing on the team bus. Is this what they listen to in the home dressing room at Twickers while Paul O’Connell is throwing a rake of f***s into the lads? The Fear of God speech versus ‘Life is a Roller Coaster’? I know which foxhole, I’d prefer to be in tomorrow.)
Another clip shows a guy recalling the one occasion he witnessed his father crying; not at his wedding, not at his sister’s wedding, he says. But ‘when YOU Rog stuck that drop goal last year in Cardiff’. Your dad didn’t wait 60-odd years for his son to get married though, in fairness.
Eli Manning doesn’t have to ponder long on when the last time he saw his big brother cry.
The Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton is considered one of the best QBs ever to play the game, as Martin Johnson — a massive gridiron fan — will well know.
The Colts play with horseshoes — superstition’s touchstone — on their helmets but their luck had bolted by the time Peyton realised he had thrown away the Super Bowl last month against his hometown team of New Orleans.
With the blue-hot favourites driving in the final minutes for a game-tying touchdown, Peyton drilled a ball into the waiting arms of a Saint, who returned for a touchdown. Game over, Ger. And so the world’s greatest week big-game hype – with all its pomp and festooned ritual – came to a shuddering stop for one side.
Another set of Manning brothers — the ever-popular showband greats from Leeside — might have sung: let the heartaches begin. But let’s hope that’s an English tune tomorrow.
Email: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
This column first appeared in this morning’s Irish Examiner newspaper.
This was the view from my hotel room in Ballsbridge last weekend (after the Examiner v Indo game).
The new Aviva – or The Palindome as we’re calling it around here – looks like it’s gonna be an amazing new home for Irish football and rugby. And Michael Buble.
Damien Duff will this morning unpack a suitcase in his London pad after leaving the Ireland camp, on the back of a 10-day stint away from home, to rejoin his new team-mates at Fulham.
If a week is a long time in football, as the truism rings, then a week-and-a-half on the road for an international double-header must feel like an eternity. I attempted to find out just what the Ballyboden native and his Irish roomies do for entertainment on trips stamped in green. And I decided to have this chat over a game of Tomy Super Cup Football.
For those wretches unfamiliar with the joy that is Tomy Soccer, as we knew it, I must explain that it was the pinnacle of sporting gaming in the 1980s. Produced by the Japanese toy giants (the now-faded box features a picture of Graeme Sharp in his Eveton blue jossling with Manchester United’s be-mulleted Arthur Albiston) it features two teams of tiny (and fragile) players who are moved up and down using levers, striking the ball with a flat paddle attached to their base.
If American presidents and supreme court judges face the crude litmnus test of the abortion debate, we children of the 80s divided all men into two groups; Tomy Soccer and Subbuteo.
Duff’s languid style and magician’s trunk of tricks betrays a flick-to-kick merchant, and he eyes suspiciously the battered cardboard box. I try to sound confident in challenging a talented, millonaire football star to a showdown, in an empty room, on a tiny, mechanised pitch. “Go on then,” he says, “Let’s have a game.” Read the rest of this entry »
I sadly enough watched some of the anemic NBA All-Star game last weekend where one of the highlights of the celebrities’ court performances was the tigerish defending from hip-hop heavyweight Common.
I missed, however, the undisputed high-point, above, as it occured during a time-out and wasn’t televised.
In short, Benny the Bull – Chicago’s outgoing mascot – decided, quite reasonably, to perform the Single Ladies dance in front of Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z who was sitting court-side with his pal, P Diddy. They weren’t amused. Check it out from 40 seconds in.
The Irish Examiner and The Sunday Business Post newsrooms will at last unite for a game versus Independent Media this Saturday for the victims of Haiti’s recent earthquake.
It’s 2pm kick-off at the famous Tolka Park (after Bohs boss Pat Fenlon scuppered our plans for the more famous Dalymount Park earlier this week).
All welcome, details here.
UPDATE: Hold the back page: the game ended 2-2, with well over €4000 raised for Haven’s efforts in Haiti. The Examiner lot one the dance off however.
Some 1200 Canadian students put years of bullying, sporting dyslexia and social awkwardness behind them to unite this month and play the greatest game of dodgeball the human world has ever seen.
I couldn’t participate as I’m still serving a 12-month ban. See here.
The Saints capped a remarkable sporting journey, late on Sunday night, when underdog quarterback Drew Brees drove New Orleans to a stunning victory over the Indianapolis Colts. Among the crowd, we know, in the Sun Life Stadium in southern Miami were a couple of GAA stars; but what can the association learn from the NFL’s greatest show on earth?
1. The game on Sunday night is the last high-wire act in a week-long, multi-ring circus. For the days leading up to the tie former NFL stars make themselves available for workshops with kids; agents and administrators hold public debates and think-ins on the business of their sport while media have access to both teams for a three full days. Why not make the respective All-Ireland finals the culmination to a seven-day festival of the sport. It’s good business.
2. The famous half-time show was merely an exercise in Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry slowly dismantling their hard-earned rock’n'roll reputation with every creaky windmill manoeuvre and missed cue. If The Who offer themselves as half-time entertainment, let’s stick with the Artane Band
3. Peyton Manning is like a super quarter-back built in a lab by the US government using parts from slightly lesser QBs. In other words, just like Henry Shefflin. But not even Manning, with his obsessive-compulsive preparation, laser-like football mind and metronomic arm could lead the Colts to a win that was utterly expected. Fairytales happen, and the GAA world should not expect the Cats to go on winning forever. Right?
4. This year’s broadcast became the most watched event in American TV since the last episode of MASH with 116 million people tuning in. But as much as the on-field action and the half-time show, the commercials that punctuate the play receive as much attention. This year Hollywood starlet Megan Fox in a bath selling mobile phones as well as bitter rivals David Letterman and Jay Leno teaming up for a spot drew the most attention. Perhaps it’s time for the GAA and its sponsors to move away from its top stars hawking cattle feed and Wavin pipes.
5. The Saints won an unlikely victory a mere four years after Hurricane Katrina brought the jazz in New Orleans to a sudden stop. It’s clearly a silly parallel to attempt to draw but there are a collection counties who’ve endured a winter of discontent here – very often under an unwelcome veil of flood water. Like Brees and his inspirational Saints, they’ll be aiming to make hay when the sun shines once again.
First posted this morning to the Irish Examiner sportsblog.
Old soldiers often visit now-green fields which long ago heard their last gunshot in order to retrace hard-made steps and remember battles fought.
If any gnarled and scarred Irish veterans of the memorable USA ‘94 campaign ever make the pilgrimage stateside, the site of their most famous victory will be utterly unrecognisable.
Earlier today, the demolition of Giants Stadium got started when a massive metal claw bit chunks from the cement helix. Dust clouds poured into the Meadowlands air as concrete and metal spokes poked through the shredded facade.
The stadium is merely 34-years-old and was, apparently, perfectly fit for purpose. But in that most American way, it was decided to topple it and start again. Renewal.
Just like the renowned and beautiful Yankee Stadium which went the same way recently and the Mets’ Shea Stadium, Giants Stadium was discarded like an old fashioned overcoat, before a new ‘facility’ is built right across the street.
There are, I think, few pleasures in life more exciting than a great sports ground in the pregnant hour or two before a much-anticipated event. Like that Heineken Cup TV advert which depicts a grizzled old groundsman recounting sepia-tinted days in the stadium while memories of solid tackles and spectacular tries visibly haunt the turf, sitting in a stadium and imagining the history that was played out in the little bit of real estate is a wonderful little experience.
Anyone whoever played the backroom in Cork’s Sir Henry’s could claim a shared performance heritage with Nirvana and Sonic Youth (and they did) and so too anyone who sat in a stadium seat that was witness to sporting soap opera, plugged into its rich history.
I wasn’t at the game in 1994 on that searingly hot June Saturday. And now, alas, I won’t be able to sit high in the bleachers in New Jersey and replay in my mind’s eye what I witnessed on the televison on the green canvas in front of me.
Due to the mutli-chrome spectrum of sports that was hosted in Meadowlands, I could have made my X on any blade of grass and hit upon a splinter of history.
As well as field goals kicked, Springsteen anthems bellowed and goals scored, labour leader Jimmy Hoffa was said to be buried in the foundations at one end zone (the Hoffa Zone, predictably).
This has since been disproved but it’s a good story, and it’s a great place to be dumped – if you were, in fact, killed by mobsters.
Here in Ireland? We’ll always remember Giants Stadium for Ray Houghton’s looping goal over a stranded Pagliuca that sent the country into absolute raptures. Paul McGrath once recounted a time when Villa played Inter in the UEFA Cup I think and the Italian goalkeeper grabbed him by the arm in the tunnel and sang, unblinkingly, ‘Oooh Aaah Paul McGrath’ at a bemused Black Pearl of Inchicore; a ditty learned that day in New Jersey.
If the demolition machinery creaked to a halt now, you might just hear 50,000 red-neck Irish people oohing and aaahing still.
Cross posted to the Irish Examiner sportsblog.
Anyone who follows NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter is lucky enough to have their mundane, work-a-day lives punctuated by lightening strikes of comic genius – intentional or not – from the Cleveland Cavaliers star.
Now – at last! – someone has made motivational posters for you, reader, from Shaq’s musings. I encourage you to print them out and paste above the office watercooler, next to the ab-crunching machine in the gymnasium or simply leave on the LUAS for random and demotivated commuters to pick up and find a morsel of inspiration.
If you feel you’re ready for the wisdom, you can find the rest here.
From the front page of today’s Irish Examiner: Bertie Ahern watches the Arsenal-Man U game in 3D in Fagan’s. Insert your own joke.
Emmet Ryan of Action81 was there for us – you can check out his report there, including the former Toiseach’s opinion.